"I’m not a musician or a singer," says Creative Arts Pastor Jeremy Paine, "and perhaps that puts me in a unique position to be a better organizer. It may also allow me to be more objective about our technology."

New Day Church was happy to have 64 people in attendance at its first Sunday service in 2008 and, like many portable churches, spent time moving between community rooms and hotel space, hauling a trailer of equipment and Bibles to each new venue. In 2010, the church found an ideal space to grow in the theater at the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. There, a talented and devoted technical team continues to find new ways to streamline the operation and design simple, effective productions that spread the gospel.

Creative Arts Pastor Jeremy Paine oversees the worship and production teams, as well as all new technology. “I'm not a musician or a singer,” he says, “ and perhaps that puts me in a unique position to be a better organizer. It may also allow me to be more objective about our technology.”

Paine's innovative technology choices have streamlined the set-up and operation at New Day while expanding a contemporary service that is keeping attendance at this church on an upward trend. This year, New Day's engaging contemporary service is reaching the theater's capacity—600 adults with 150 children attend weekly in three Sunday services.

At 28 years old, Paine has had a lot of production experience, but it was a friend's invitation to a Sunday evening service that changed his direction toward the church. Paine acquired exposure to audio and lighting in high school, but did not pursue the arts in college. When he took a break from school, it was a friend who casually invited him to come to church. The experience at that evening service changed his life and his vocation. “I was hooked,” he recalls. “I guess I always had the passion, but never thought of going to the next level.”

Subsequently, Paine worked as an audio expert in several area churches. He enjoyed the work so much that he attended New England Institute of Art, attaining a degree in audio and media technology. It was just before his graduation that he came on board at New Day, while also working part-time for ATC Audio of Springfield, Mass. After three years, the church was ready for a full-time technology person and Paine was up to the job. “The position of creative arts pastor includes overseeing both the production team and the worship team, as well as all new technology, like New Day's web presence and soon-to-be-introduced phone app,” Paine shares.

Mike Sorcinelli is lead pastor at New Day Church and points to Paine's role in applying new technology for the church as a key element in the church's growth. “As a portable church, we have a time window in which to complete our mission to make disciples. Our technology helps us do just that. On Sunday, technology engages people in the message, but it goes far beyond that. Our online podcast, CDs, DVDs and app multiply our reach.” More importantly, Sorcinelli has witnessed how new technology has made his portable church set up easier.

Getting into gear

"We want the New Day Church experience to exceed peoples’ expectations, and our technology is helping us to do just that."

Jeremy Paine

Creative Arts Pastor, New Day Church, Springfield, MA.

The action at New Day starts on Sunday morning at 7:15 a.m. as the technical team sets up for an 8:10 a.m. band practice followed by quick run-throughs. They have until 8:45 to prepare for the first service at 9 a.m. With a lot of gear needing to be moved from storage lockers to the stage, Paine and his team have made several key buying decisions that help to streamline the process. “To make it all happen on Sunday we need to constantly be aware of stage clutter,” he says. To cut down on cables and improve the quality of the worship service, the performers moved to in-ear monitors and guitarists agreed to “go direct,” using exclusively Line 6 Pod HD500 pedal boards. While some musicians might find the lack of guitar amps on stage confining, New Day's musicians have found the benefits to be great—on and off stage.

Without a permanent rehearsal space at the facility, the group meets during the week away from the venue at a volunteer's house. Pedal boards represent an alternative to transporting individual amplifiers with daisy-chained pedals and power supplies. In addition, Paine reports that having guitarists on a common piece of gear helps them sort out problems quicker, and makes the learning curve less steep for people joining the group. “I've worked at churches where people are very particular about their equipment choices,” says Paine. “But at New Day we've agreed that using in-ear monitoring and the pedal boards would help us to significantly eliminate cables and clutter. It's really worked. More importantly, it reduces set-up time on Sunday mornings so we can concentrate on improving the service. It's definitely been worth the sacrifice for us.”

For sound, New Day Church uses JBL VP7215 speakers set on top of JBL PR618S-XLF 18-inch subwoofers with a dbx DriveRack PA for processing/crossover. A Yamaha LS9-32 controls audio for FOH with an SB168-ES EtherSound stage box for connection to the front of the theater and band inputs. Wireless inputs are handled by a Shure ULX-D quad channel wireless receiver with two packs and two hand held microphones. For monitors, New Day uses eight Sennheiser EW300 G3 in-ear systems, each controlled with a Pivitec e32 mixer.

The church transitioned from nine powered floor monitors to in-ear monitoring three years ago after acquiring the LS9 console, but even with quality in-ear monitoring, finding the right mixes seemed to be a constant battle. “We were getting decent mixes, but hearing each other on stage remained a challenge for the vocalists until we found Pivitec (personal monitoring systems)—that made a huge difference,” Paine reports.

New Day has a typical Pivitec installation with a Pivitec e16io-MY card installed in the LS9 console that allows audio channels to be delivered via an Ethernet switch to Pivitec e32 personal monitor mixers. From there, the V2Mix Pro app for iOS devices allows musicians to mix their own monitors over Wi-Fi with an iPhone or iPad. Pivitec's e32 mixers can either be used on stage with the musicians or rack mounted as they are at New Day. Other key features for Pivitec users include the high-output/low-noise headphone amp and the ability to record from Pivitec inputs to individual .wav files using V2Mix Capture application for Mac. An important factor for Paine's choice of Pivitec was ease of use. “Pivitec is simple to use,” he states. “After the first week, the team could easily mix their monitors with the Pivitec app.”

Critical video and lighting decisions

Partly because of New Day's location in a movie theater, Paine and his team made the decision to invest in video. “We spent significant funds to put our pastor on the big screen,” he says. “What we had before looked okay, but didn't look great. Now, our projection equipment is some of our most expensive pieces of gear.” The church uses Blackmagic Design Television Studio for switching and two stationary Panasonic AG-HPX250 HD cameras mounted high on tripod stands for IMAG and recording. A MacBook Pro runs ProPresenter presentation software for graphics and a Panasonic PT-DW11K projector is used for the main screen in the theater. “It's a huge impact on the theater's 24x18-foot screen,” says Paine.

Another huge timesaver is New Day's portable drum rig. Custom built on two rolling platforms (4-foot by 8-foot and 3-foot by 4-foot) to fit storage areas and the elevator at the venue, the drum rig remains set up in storage and is rolled to stage on Sunday morning. A 12-channel sub snake for the drums facilitates a quick connection to the Yamaha StageBox and saves an estimated 20-30 minutes of drum set-up. Plus, the consistent microphone assignment and placement on the kit saves even more time.

Lighting at New Day has intentionally been simple due to setup time and space limitations. In addition, restrictions at the venue prohibit fog, so no moving lights are used. Mounted in the theater, the church has four ETC Source Four ellipsoidals and Source Four par fixtures with a rack-mounted ETC lighting control system. To that, Paine has added 10 Chauvet Professional ColorDash Batten-Quad 6 fixtures for accent and uplighting sets, along with four ADJ LED Par-64s and two Chauvet 4Bar LED fixtures. The ColorRdash fixtures are the main fixtures for lighting the stage, with others used as needed.

While the church does have a small DMX control system in their rack, lighting is set up to be static for each sermon series and floor fixtures are typically set manually to appropriate colors as accent lighting. Manual settings minimize the need for cabling and keep design changes simple. “We made the decision to keep lighting simple,” says Paine, “[because] the time spent designing, hooking up and running any complicated lighting in our limited space just wouldn't benefit our service.”

Paine acknowledges that new technology is expensive, but feels that without keeping up with current technology a church can't expect to keep a congregation's attention. “Today, more than ever, current technology is mission critical. Don't think that you can just 'scrape by' with an old mixer and gear,” he advises. “Using the right technology has streamlined our service and made us better. And, we've seen first-hand how the 'wow factor' can bring first-time visitors back to us.”

Sorcinelli agrees, saying, “Technology can turn people around; make church more relevant and not boring. We want the New Day Church experience to exceed peoples' expectations, and our technology is helping us to do just that.”